Bitcoin Forum

Stated recently by one of my G+ peeps:

(emphasis mine)

I don't know how widespread the perception is, but peeps are clearly thinking of bitcoin as "expensive" because of the high exchange rate per BTC. It is, however, purely psychological: refer to it as 23c per million satoshi or 2,3c per mBTC and suddenly it looks cheap enough!

Is it time we started thinking of, and routinely quoting exchange rates in, $ or cents per mBTC (BTM) instead of per full BTC? Online gaming is already (voluntarily, intentionally or not) standardizing the mBTC as a common basic token of value. This may help dispel the notion that bitcoins are outrageously expensive. My uncle did admit it sounds a lot cheaper if prices are quoted per 10 mBTC or per mBTC.

Absolutely. At some point the millibits will turn into the standard BTC unit. If it were for me, that moment could perfectly be right now.

Peace

It is going to happen organically as the exchange rate rises.  Personally I think pricing in mBTC is likely a little early but Bitcoin is decentralized and open.  Start quoting prices and exchange rates in mBTC if your prefer.  I may throw it up on https://fastcash4bitcoin.com  it takes ~43mBTC to receive one dollar ($1 USD).

yes. give it another order of magnitude, e.g. 100USD@1BTC. Then you get 0.1USD@1mBTC.

This will happen naturally as the price of 1 actual Bitcoin reaches a value too high for many people to own a whole one. This might seem a joke right now but in a few years time of Bitcoin trading growth, I have a strong feeling that everyone that gets in late in the Bitcoin scene will be working in decimal points of a Bitcoin.

Great post. mBTC all the way!

Of course this thought may be further exacerbated by the fact that mBTC is all I've got in my wallet right now. ;D Switching Bitcoin-QT to work in mBTC or even µBTC can make one feel delusionally richer! But back to the real world, and my client shows amounts in BTC with a total balance below BTC1 at present...

on the other hand its kind of silly to have the "digital gold" sell at 2,3c a piece. what is "expensive" to some is "valuable" to others. most of the time, bitcoin had much more trouble getting recognition as something of value. its much harder to take that argument serious if a piece is in the same ballpark as an ounze of silver. besides that, i think its more important that denomination is always the same in a specific context. for gaming mbtc or bitcent might be a good, for a site selling or trading in higher valued items, it might not be.

Ok, that's it. Time to sell...  ::)

yes. but not with a prefix like milli but with a smaller base unit. BTM, bitmills,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_%28currency%29

And I was just starting to think it's too expensive at $1500 per 50BTC! All I need to do is think in smaller units and then Bitcoin looks cheaper. Win!

In old time, people without enough mathematics training had a hard time to do complex float point calculation, that's the reason previous currency seldom went below 2 decimal place

Now everyone have learned mathematics, I think they can handle 3 decimal places without a calculator, but beyond 4 is still not very convenient, mBTC is the next step when BTC reached parity with one ounce gold

Not really necessary. It's just an artifact of not being familiar with dealing with multiple currencies. Growing up, a £ would buy you several thousand Italian Lira and nobody thought of changing the pound (though I believe the Lira was actually revalued some time before the Euro was adopted). Time to move away from provincialism, it's a global economy now.

It truly is a global economy, and a trusted global currency is necessary to facilitate trade.

People dont understand that there was a time when 10 USD was a monthly sallary, and that people used to deal in cents

I was reading the other day, (possibly on here) of someone who carries a silver dollar around (with $1 stamped on it, obviously) and asks people how much it's worth to illustrate what inflation has done to the currency.

I just watched a YouTube video about the "case for $960 [per ozt] silver". In the Roman Empire, historically, one silver denarius of about a tenth of an ounce, was equated in value to about a day's hard labour. In modern society it seems that gold and silver have been seriously demonetized, and presumably, if it comes to pass, a failure, either partial or total, of paper money/credit, will revalue them closer to their historic value. That's what the metalbugs think, anyway, but there's no absolute certainty they're right, only a degree of probability.

1 Internet = 0.335 USD

Why should people return to silver and gold when there is a far superior alternative?

I think I know what you're referring to ;D but that "far superior alternative" still requires internet. Gold and silver aren't going away (IMO): we now have precious metals and cryptocurrencies (of which BTC is king) to work with, and you can never have too much free competition.

That makes no sense to me. Since then, materials have changed, mining technologies have changed, the population has changed and jewelery and coin production methodologies and usages have changed. To say they are currently undervalued is one thing but to make claims that they will revalue close to their previous values is unfounded.

It may well be, but on the other hand when you have thousands of years of history to back up a theory...

Personally, I'm not making any prediction that Ag will rise to $1k/ozt in today's money any time soon, for that would be silly. But the video is somewhat interesting anyway.

1000 years of history has us riding horses and burning dung to stay warm. 1000 years is a short period time in one aspect and a long period of time in another. So much has changed in the last 200 years and it would take something very, very drastic to reverse some of those changes (using steam as a power source will likely never go away for example) and something that drastic would complicate calculations of price more, not less.

Regardless, I'm planning on adding some silver to the portfolio. Though durable goods is top of the list at the moment.

Well, gold and silver require a truck... or a pretty large wheelbarrow.  :D

$40 or $50 would be a great point to gladly change this.
$50 for just 1 Bitcoin is for most people not psychological doable.

Pfft. So will the dollar, soon.

They can always print them in trillion-denominations, like Zim dollars. ;D

Heh. I found this

http://burlington.fatcow.com/trillion/trillionfront2.jpg

But to try and pin it on Obama would be to miss the many, many others who are complicit in this fraud.

The party started some 40 years ago. Obama came at a time when the music stopped and the booze ran out.